‘Total hero:’ Apple co-founder says Snowden gave up his life to reveal NSA surveillance

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gushed over former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, calling him a “total hero” and saying he “gave up his life” to reveal the agency’s surveillance programs.

In a wide ranging interview with Arabian Business, Wozniak spoke about
surveillance, hacking, privacy and security, in addition to
Snowden. Wozniak was in Dubai this month for the Gartner
Symposium, and when he was asked whether he thinks Snowden is a
hero or a villain, he was unequivocal.

"Total hero to me; total hero," Wozniak said. "Not
necessarily [for] what he exposed, but the fact that he
internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United
States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And
now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was
unconstitutional."

In 2013, Snowden revealed classified NSA documents to reporters
which exposed the controversial programs for the first time,
leading to a public outcry about government overreach and
violations of the US Constitution.

A federal court in New York this month found one of the programs
used by the government – one which collected Americans phone
records in bulk – to be illegal. The NSA’s controversial
collection of data on these telephone calls under the Patriot Act
is due to sunset in five days unless Congress can agree to
address privacy concerns over the surveillance.

"He's a hero to me, because he gave up his own life to do
it," said Wozniak. "And he was a young person, to give
up his life. But he did it for reasons of trying to help the rest
of us and not just mess up a company he didn't like."

Wozniak has been complimentary about Snowden before. Two years
ago, he compared Snowden to Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel
Ellsberg. Last year, Wozniak also told reporters that he briefly
met Snowden at a small event in Moscow, where the former NSA
employee is currently living.

Wozniak has expressed some regret in the past for the role
technology has played in allowing the government to expand its
surveillance efforts. He told CNN in 2013 that those in the digital
world “didn’t realize…there were a lot of ways to use the
digital technology to control us, to snoop on us, to make things
possible that weren’t.”

Steve Wozniak: Snowden is a "total hero to me" because "he gave
up his own life . . . to help the rest of us" https://t.co/Krx03s1vjF

Snowden’s revelations have resulted in an increase in demand for
encrypted telecommunications. Wozniak is “pessimistic about
prospects of protection,” and said the problem extends back
to “the early years of [operating system] development.”

"It's almost impossible [to protect yourself] because today's
operating systems generally get so huge that they can only come
from a few sources, like Microsoft, Google and Apple,"
Wozniak said. "And those operating systems have so many
millions of lines of code in them, built by tens of thousands of
engineers over time, that it's so difficult to go back and detect
anything in it that's spying on you. It's like having a house
with 50,000 doors and windows and you have no idea where there
might be a tiny little camera."

Privacy isn’t the only concern, though. Increasingly,
cyberattacks made on institutions like utilities and healthcare
companies are becoming commonplace. On Tuesday, the IRS announced
that the personal data of some 100,000 taxpayers was hacked.

A US hacker named Chris Roberts told FBI agents earlier this
month that he hacked the navigation systems of a commercial US
airline through the plane’s inflight entertainment system and
successfully executed a “climb” command.

"First of all we have to thank [Roberts] because whatever he
did, whether it's real or made up, it sure brought to our
attention how critical this is," says Wozniak. "Why do
people leave out security all the time? It's just how we are as
humans. We grew up with very little security in our homes. Just a
lock on the door.”

According to reports, Roberts cracked the control system using a
modified Ethernet cable, and a default username and passwords.
Wozniak said new technology “leaves out security and
protections; they just want to accomplish something that hasn’t
been done before…once they get attacked, they have to go back and
think out the security.”